FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
Does that mean anything to you? When you look at... anything - a person, a work, a system, a phenomenon - are you struck by the impression that there is so much that remains unread? Do you want to believe that there is so much that remains unread?
I have been, certainly. I do not think I am often "struck" by this now, as it has moved past initial revelation into basic knowledge. The list of unknowns is infinite. As the author says, "Our brains have one scale, and adjust our experiences to fit." "Human subcultures are nested fractally; there is no bottom.". Everything is like this. But I wonder if you would agree that I am capturing the essence of "so much remaining unread."
Do I want to believe that there is so much that remains unread? There seems to be an implicit optimism in this question that I do not think I can muster. I would like to believe that there is deep value contained in Trout Mask Replica or The Large Glass or The Birth of the World, to the extent that I have made some minimal effort to sift them or to try to get leads from others. I can recognize some level of significant value in Klee's Angelus Novus because I greatly value some of those his work inspired, and I can work backward to see how his work influenced theirs, and I can imagine that there is more in that piece that I lack the context to recognize.
But on the other hand, the unknowns remain infinite, and life is fleeting. I do not think that there is enough there there in any of those pieces, for me, to be worth the time digging for it would take. And so my time and effort goes to what seem to me to be more fruitful artistic pursuits.
Suppose that there were no God; even if you think this is absolutely inconceivable, try to grant it as a hypothetical.
There being no God is entirely conceivable to me. I used to be an atheist; not being an atheist now is a choice I make freely each day. The other side of that choice does not seem mysterious or inexplicable to me.
What would become of the "A" view then? Would it still make sense, in any context, or no? If there were no God, would reality shrink to the point that we actually could master it all in a rational, calculated way?
I would say no. God's existence or non-existence doesn't seem to me to have any significant impact on the correctness of the "A" view.
Are there certain attitudes - wonder, awe - which, when applied to mortals and their deeds, can easily be construed as a category error at best and blasphemy at worst?
I think so, but wouldn't mind some elaboration.
There's that quote above: "our brains have one scale, and adjust our experiences to fit." I think that's a pretty insightful description of how the human mind works: we can focus down on some emotion or some aspect until it fills our entire perception. We can work it into our past and our hopes for the future, wind ourself around it till we grow to its shape, obsess over it, bend every other aspect of our life back to it, until it seems to be all that matters, elemental, primordial, a terminal value, the hub of our universe. And we can, I think, do this with anything. The subjective perception of value has no necessary correlation to actual value. Feelings of goodness have no necessary correlation to goodness. And some forms of twisting our minds in this way appear to me to be deeply misguided or actively evil.
I spent a considerable portion of my life chasing Eros, and I went far enough for long enough down that rabbit hole to get philosophical about it, to begin trying to search for transcendence in it, to consider shaping significant portions of my life around it. In retrospect, that seems to have been, as you say, at best a category error, and at worst blasphemy.
Wrath is far sweeter. "The blood sings" is an evocative phrase, but the experience itself is a pleasure beyond easy description. The world narrows, simplifies, clarifies. The hands shake, the teeth grind, the mouth twists into a rictus of sheer pleasure and ravenous anticipation. And that is only the hot, momentary rush; nurtured, over time, a cold fury builds secret and implacable within the mind and the heart, like an avalanche of iron poised to sweep down on the adversary. Down in the chthonic depths of the inmost self, the primordial drives of cooperation, competition, and predation come alive. And high above in the heavens of the rational mind, the sunlike certainty shines clear that one's wrath is Just, that They Deserve It All And More, that this is how it should be, that this is how it must be. Then there comes the flowering of Pride; I am better than them, I will be their downfall, I will lay the snare, I will triumph... There is grandeur there, and ample room for awe and wonder. The pull is strong, easily strong enough to shape a life, to define one's entire existence. Brief though that existence might be, would it be so terrible to be a meteor, to burn so bright as to illuminate the world, even for an instant?
And yet: "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." Merciful, smothering calm. Stillness. A sense of hollowness, brittle, like an empty shell. Sanity returns, and with it shame. Here too, "Blasphemy" seems an appropriate term.
Basically, I would like to determine the extent to which the light of the Almighty makes everything else seem dull in comparison.
I formed most of my opinions about art back when I was an atheist, and returning to Christianity has not materially changed them. Atheist or Christian, I have always been skeptical of emotion; I do not "trust my feelings", and I do not think that others should either. They have swept me up before, and I have experienced what seemed to me a full measure of their extremities, but they eventually pass, and life resumes.
It is a contingent, empirical truth that there are a number of facts about reality which remain unknown, and therefore, on a rational cost-benefit analysis, we should refrain from hasty action. But in principle, if we could learn enough true facts, we may not need to be as prudent.
The latter. If scientists can actually demonstrate mind reading and mind control, what would be the point in arguing that they can't do so? Reality is reality. "A" is a caution against a specific lie that we have previously and are currently telling ourselves; it has no bearing on counterfactual scenarios, and can be entirely invalidated by subsequent events should scientists actually succeed in their Abolition of Man.
We do not now control nature in the sense that I perceive "B" advocates to be claiming. But it seems to me that art is much closer to "B" than it is to "A". Its scope seems clearly limited. We have not "solved" it, nor reduced it to pure engineering, but neither does it run rampant, dismaying our intentions and trampling our works. There are artistic misfortunes, but there has never been an artistic disaster, nor, I think, will there be.
I've been speaking about art as a totality - all of it, across time and space, not just one kind or type. And furthermore I disagree that commercial art is "frivolous".
I'm given to understand that one of the generally accepted defining characteristics of art is that it is, strictly speaking, unnecessary, optional, chosen rather than compelled, a luxury rather than a necessity. Further, it seems obvious to me that commercial art, made as a job to earn money, is generally considered to hold the least artistic merit, relative to works made out of sheer passion. Would you disagree?
End of Evangelion for example is an exemplary film, plainly a creative triumph of the first order, despite it being a thoroughly "commercial" work and having a mass theatrical release.
If a person lives and dies without seeing it, do you think their life was necessarily made lesser thereby? I don't particularly disagree that End of Evangelion is a "creative triumph". For that matter, I think the Madoka fanfic Fargo is a creative triumph. And I think the same of Hellboy, BLAME, and the H&K MP5K submachinegun. I think my disagreement is more about the significance of "creative triumphs" in general. I maintain that these are games we play together. Games are a good and proper part of life, and it is well that we should enjoy them. But they are not of terminal or even of very great value. Many things should outweigh them in a healthy worldview, because their scope is in fact too limited to support a central role in our existence.
If I tell you that I highly value Duchamp's The Large Glass, more than the large majority of representational works that would traditionally be considered "technically correct", would you believe that I'm being sincere? Or is this just pretension and laziness? I encourage you to be honest; I won't take it as a violation of charity if you say that I'm lying, or deluded.
I'd say I'm cautiously skeptical. I observe that people claim great value in many things. I'm confident that some of these things hold little to no value, and I'm confident that some of those claiming otherwise are either lying or deluded. For this piece in particular, I'll say that I see little to no value, am fairly confident that the value you draw would be sufficiently esoteric as to be inaccessible to me even if I were to actively pursue the context. having not yet pursued the context, I think it less likely but still possible that it holds no real value at all, and you are deluded.
It seems obvious to me that:
- humans can generate endless rabbit holes out of anything or even nothing, for a variety of reasons.
- These rabbit holes appear to me to vary widely in perceived value, and that my perception of value appears to correlates with the perception of others, and the features that indicate the presence or absence of value likewise correlate. In other words, value doesn't seem wholly, solipsisticly subjective.
- Some of them seem straightforwardly explicable even from the outside, meaning that their depth appears to be illusory.
- Some of them seem to be straightforwardly harmful to those caught in them, even if those caught in them disagree.
Given the above, discrimination is necessary, is it not? Life is fleeting. We pays our money and we takes our chances. And given the above, arguing for or against the value of a thing is useful; whoever is wrong could benefit greatly from correction.
All this is to say, I entirely recognize that value might exist even if I cannot see it. I am at this moment actively hunting for more value down a variety of rabbit holes, some of which might be completely bizarre and inexplicable to you, so it is easy for me to imagine that you likewise are mining gold down a hole that seems bizarre and inexplicable to me.
But do you recognize that value is sometimes, perhaps even often claimed falsely? And further, that sometimes those claiming to perceive the value are themselves misled? You asked if I wonder whether there might be more. I ask if you wonder if there might be less?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
29d ago
"He can't keep getting away with it."
It seems to me that we Trump supporters also feel this way, simply with a different referent. Hence, Trump.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
30d ago
But nonetheless, if the phrase "artist's temperament" is going to mean anything at all, then it must be something determinate, to the exclusion of what it is not; and I don't really see how it applies to you.
I love the act of creation, of weaving new things out of my imagination and building them up into something approximating reality, drawing connections between them, rolling them up into a big katamari-ball of associations and idea-connections and emotional inductions. This act brings me great joy and delight, and has all my life since I achieved self-awareness.
I love sharing these creations with others, and seeing joy and delight spark in their eyes, hearing their laughter and excitement, seeing them experience the induced triumph or sorrow or conviction as what I've made sweeps them up and carries them along, even if only for a moment or two. I love the communion with others innate to this act, the joyful seduction of drawing them out of the material and mundane into the immaterial and fantastical.
I am vain enough to desire that it is my creations that should strike a fire in their minds, that some part of me should take root in those around me, to see some part of myself reproduced in the mind of others. I want to make a mark on those around me.
But in much the same way, I love partaking in the creations of others, being swept away or inspired in turn, and I love taking pieces of what they have made and kitbashing them together into something "new" of my own. I love finding the Buddha-nature in something, finding which parts of it hook and pull, which motivate, where the payload lies and through which channels the current flows, and I love how this knowledge, once gained, strengthens and invigorates my own creations. It's a push and pull, give and take, cooperation and competition, like all of the best things in life. This, to me, is the essence of the "artist's temperament", the center around which any dividing line should be drawn.
Do you disagree? And if so, how would you define the center of the "artist's temperament"? The distinction that stands out from what you've written appears to be the idea of the mysterious, the numinous, the "losing of one's head", the encounter of something incomprehensibly vast or primordial. You are correct that I see art from a "B" perspective, or close enough for purposes of discussion. What I don't get is where you're getting the makings of an "A" perspective from with regards to art, other than sheer assertion. I can imagine that there's some sense I lack, some frequency I'm deaf and blind to, but I can also imagine an invisible dragon in my garage. How to proceed?
More on this soon, hopefully.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
30d ago
I had J.C. Denton read me the Unabomber manifesto. 10/10, would critique industrial civilization again.
I take the "A" view on AI art, and you take the "B" view.
In that discussion, "A" is something approximating "we are huddled around a small kernel of knowledge, surrounded by vast, dark unknowns, hoping to grow that kernel a little larger", and "B" is something approximating "We reside in a well-lit framework of knowledge that encompasses the small, fragmentary set of unknowns that remain to be eliminated", where these are referencing what we comprehend about the real world and our place in it.
But even before AI, art is our creation, is it not? Where within art are the vast unknowns that could loom over us?
We make images for our own pleasure. We find that some images please us more than others. We discover rules and techniques that optimize the pleasure generated by the images; these rules and techniques clearly derive from our own psychology and history and nature, but they seem both discoverable and explicable, and can and have been reduced to engineering. What part of this does not fit within the "B" perspective? What realities of art does it neglect, which could form an argument for "A"?
With regards to philosophy and epistemology, I would argue that "A" is better, because it better fits observable reality and the historical record, while "B" appears to me to consistently generate notable disasters; a straightforward argument from prudence. But commercial and popular art of the sort we are discussing here is inherently frivolous, so where would an argument from prudence even be grounded?
Again, I am an artist by trade and by temperament. I do not claim to have perfect insight into the nature of Art, but neither do I accept bald assertions of deeper mysteries wholly unknown and invisible to me. I have spent the better part of a lifetime observing how the sausage gets made; I can accept that there may be things of value that I do not understand or am not wired to appreciate, but I also can observe that much of what people claim to value as "art" is in fact pretention covering for laziness or naked greed. I have known too many artists to believe that the pursuit of or mere association with art confers any special virtues beyond those innate to discipline and skill, or indeed any significant insight into philosophy or truth. Beauty and Truth are not synonyms, at least for any common definition of those terms.
All that being said, what am I missing? What is the "A" view, with regards to art?
But freedom has a limit; it is, after all, only one ideal among many, one concept among many, no matter how charming of a concept it may be. I can't actually bring myself to get upset if someone gets canceled over AI art. That's how high the stakes are for me - my other "principles" turn to dust in the face of this reality.
Why, though? What is it about AI art that prompts such outrage?
I'm an artist. The AI is pretty clearly doing what I do. Any argument I see for objecting to AI art applies equally well to artists generally. To the extent that AI art infringes on copyright, we all infringe in exactly the same way when we learn to draw by copying other peoples' work. AI is very likely going to put me out of a job. But why should this be objectionable? My job is a job. The AI won't take away my ability to draw or paint or model. To the extent that it reduces the value of my drawing and painting and modelling to zero in an economic sense, why is this a bad thing, when it wasn't a bad thing to invent lace machines or lathes or jackhammers or whatever other labor-saving machines we might care to name? It won't stop me from making the art I actually care to make, and while the idea of having to change careers is quite scary, I certainly won't be in this boat alone, and I imagine that we have a reasonable collective chance of muddling through.
This makes me a hypocrite; but so what? If I contradict myself, then very well, I contradict myself. Some instincts are too powerful to be ignored.
...But then, why would you expect others to respect your own appeals to freedom, when you've concluded that no one actually cares about Freedom as such as a terminal value? You roll out the Shall Nots for something as trivial as AI generated art, but don't want people to roll them out for sexual ethics or homogeneity of values?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
My understanding is that there are a couple considerations. First, the studs used for catching are much lighter than legs used for landing. Lighter weight for the landing components means more payload.
The other part is that the engines produce blast shockwaves which reflect off the landing surface and back into the engines, causing stress and potentially damage. Catching the rocket well off the ground prevents this.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
In the case of Hlynka, his rule-breaking posts were generally highly visible, and usually when he broke the rules he did it with gusto. He simply was not willing to abide the rules, so eventually he ran out of second chances and was banned. I don't think him having a "fan-club" of reporters mattered much one way or the other.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
concur that time will tell, and if there's any solid evidence of intent, I'm open to hearing it.
My understanding is that the fake ID and fake plates is standard sovereign citizen behavior. they make their own license plates and IDs routinely (or use novelty reproductions) because it's part of the sovereign citizen memplex; they believe they're the "real" united states government, so they issue themselves "official" ID. I've heard he claims not to be a sovereign citizen, but I'm not sure if that's just a permutation of the meme, where he'd claim to actually be a "free citizen traveling" or whatever not-actually-a-distinction.
Multiple weapons isn't that weird. When I travel with guns, I usually travel with more than one.
A Canadian lady apparently tried Ricin.
For this incident, my current understanding is that the only evidence that he intended an assassination attempt is a loaded weapon in his trunk, while he denies any such intention, and appears to be an enthusiastic Trump supporter. My bet is that he was not actually an assassin.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
your measurement definitely beats my eyeballing. and yeah, I'd be mystified at how either one could end up in that position in a kid's head, on purpose. Like, you need the bullet to have lost 80-90% of its velocity before it's going to stop like that, so we're probably talking high-angle fire at long ranges.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
they use 7.62 NATO for snipers and machine guns, IIRC, and .50 for HMGs. that bullet looks like a .50.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
You're assuming that's a 7.62x51 projectile. It looks like a .50 BMG to me, given the relative scale to the head, unless that's a newborn.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
Organization and management is also labor.
There is a reason SpaceX has developed and deployed this capability, and none of the national space organizations and none of the private space organizations succeeded or even tried.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
According to Musk, they're explicitly prevented from hiring migrants due to Federal ITAR rules, which means they're being sued by the Feds for obeying a Federal law.
This would be more effective the more this perpetrator could serve as an effigy of the outgroup. Life in prison for a single easily mockable overweight Democratic Party apparatchik transwoman would have gone a long way to restore faith in institutions in many Deplorables, and if that person did in fact perform election fraud it would not even be unjust under the standard American understanding of justice.
I think we're past that, unfortunately. Toss out a scapegoat, and that will be seen as "here's the one they couldn't cover up, just imagine what else they're hiding".
Trump is an instructive example here, I think. I would argue that he has been investigated pretty thoroughly, and now he's even been prosecuted, tried and convicted. I think there's a pretty good argument to be made that, by any reasonable standard, he doesn't have any skeletons left in the closet, and what we see is what we get. By contrast, the sense I get from Blue Tribe is not "the process has succeeded, we have discovered his crimes and punished him for them", but rather "we've barely scratched the surface, he's obviously guilty of a thousand times worse offences, and the fact that he isn't in jail is an indictment of the system." Further, it seems to me that the impeachments and prosecutions and conviction (and, one might argue, the assassination attempts) have only fed the appetite for a dramatic conclusion. People want to see the mammoth brought down under the spears of the tribe, and every spear thrown only increases that desire.
I think Democrats are wrong to take this stance with Trump, but I do not think they are obviously wrong. A similar argument was made for Bill and Hillary Clinton, and it held no water with me for what seem to me to be solid, entirely factual reasons. If we look at non-partisan examples, crime lords for instance, we see that despite intense investigation and prosecution, often they are only formally held to account for a small fraction of their misdeeds.
More generally, the problem is that there isn't a "we". Reds and Blues do not perceive sufficient shared values and interests to make power-sharing practical. Elections are a vast, opaque system, and the Federal Government they maintain makes them seem miniscule and transparent as glass by comparison. It turns out that our system requires more social trust than you need for credit cards to work, and we don't have enough any more so the system is breaking down.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
It really seems like you're focusing on the worst possible examples.
That's pretty much the definition of what a "superspreader" is, isn't it? And the reason that term is now common knowledge is that, at least hypothetically, superspreaders can cause immense amounts of harm by spreading infectious diseases.
This feels like blaming all conservatives for the tiny minority involved in school shootings.
Well, let's roll out the comparison and see where it leads us. Roughly half of gay men in America died to the aids epidemic. What percentage of that number do you think died because they scrupulously avoided risky activities, and just got really, really unlucky?
Meanwhile for COVID or school shooting deaths, I don't think either correlate with Conservative behavior at all, though it is absolutely routine to see such claims made. Having seen such claims made, I'm backtracking the logic to a situation where there does, in fact, appear to be a correlation.
Do you feel that other groups should be held to a similar standard, even one's that you're a part of?
This standard has been applied to groups I'm a part of, and using false data to boot.
Does that really sound like a group that's trying to spread AIDS and opposed to restrictions on homosexual activity?
Did their efforts work? Not before the disease killed roughly half the male homosexuals in America and went on to be a global pandemic. My understanding of the history is that activists arguing for restrictions were outnumbered by those arguing for no restrictions until it was much, much too late, and even the restrictions they belatedly put in place were not enough to halt the spread.
Are you comfortable saying the same things about these groups as you are about homosexuals?
The actual record of how the disease spread and who it killed tells the story. AIDS is spread overwhelmingly by risky behavior. If Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately contracting the disease, that tells me they're disproportionately engaging in risky behavior. What's the alternative explanation?
I don't get it - you seem opposed to lockdowns for spreading an airborne pandemic that threatens everyone near you, but you also seem to be advocating for lockdowns against a pandemic which only threatens sexual partners?
In the first place, it seems pretty clear to me that the lockdowns and the vaccines failed at their defined objectives. COVID was too infectious to be controlled, the vaccines were not terribly effective and had side effects, and top-down government mandates caused much harm for little to no benefit.
Despite this, those objecting or resisting absurdly massive and unbelievably draconian interventions into every facet of our lives were treated like antisocial scum, and in many cases had the resources of the state turned against us to punish resistance in any form. This was cheered by the Blue population broadly, based on widespread lies told by academic and government agencies, and the result was demonization of people like myself.
I am pointing out that the gay community was the actual epicenter of a much worse disease than COVID, and the individual action of the members of that community evidently played a pivotal role in the disease becoming endemic, resulting in dozens of millions of deaths. The disease was straightforwardly more serious than COVID. The actions taken to spread the disease were straightforwardly more objectionable, and the end result seems significantly worse. Yet the standard narrative I observe is that American Gays were the victims, and Lockdown/Vaccine Mandate opponents were the straightforward victims.
It seems to me that this narrative is built on a stack of lies, and so I am kicking at them to see what happens.
If you think the "coordinated meanness" deployed against lockdown/mandate opponents was appropriate, what was the appropriate level of "coordinated meanness" for gay men when AIDS got rolling?
For that matter, weren't there plenty of people selfishly spreading COVID? People who went to major events and caught flights, despite knowing they were feeling sick? Isn't that selfish behavior that we should want to punish?
If we're going to punish selfish behavior, I'd like to imagine we'd punish it based on fair and impartial standards, and not play tribal favorites.
...What's your guess at the average number of sexual partners per month for a Gay man in California or New York in the era immediately predating AIDS?
That was pretty much exactly what I was looking for.
the question was prompted by seeing an advert for a self-published book, with cover-art in a very eye-catching watercolor style which immediately triggered my "that's AI" sense, and it made me curious about the state of the market these days. I've had several experiences of what I suppose you could describe as AI paranoia, the creeping suspicion that the bots are getting past my personal filter. I figure the best way to tell where the tide is would be to see where peoples' boats currently are.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
Would you consider conservatives dangerous, due to their behavior in spreading the Covid plague?
I don't think Conservative behavior had any significantly disproportional impact on spreading the Covid plague. But then, I observe that there were a lot of people who disagreed very strongly with my assessment, who called people like my own family members "plague rats", who advocated firing them from their jobs or even putting them in camps, or any of a wide variety of social or legal sanctions in between.
Meanwhile, I observe that Homosexual (and hard drug user) behavior appears to have had a very significant impact on spreading AIDS as widely as possible in the early years of the outbreak. The contrast between the treatment of those opposed to lockdowns or vaccine mandates for COVID, and those who for selfish reasons actively spread an extremely lethal plague as widely as possible is my whole point here.
Have you considered that part of why AIDS was so dangerous, was because we didn't really have the concept of "AIDS" back then?
My understanding is that from fairly early on, they understood that there was an infectious, lethal pathogen, and they understood that it was being spread primarily by homosexual practices and drug use. Further, my understanding is that some gay men intentionally spread it as much as possible, and more gay men staunchly opposed any restrictions on homosexual activity. Eventually this opposition was at least partially overcome, but by then AIDS was endemic.
Does that description seem inaccurate to you?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
Why do you think such a "community" exists?
Because I observe it existing at this very moment. There is a significant number of black people who believe that they are being harmed by my tribe in particular, and that we will continue harming them until they and their allies have all the power and we have none. This is encouraged by Blue Tribe, who amplify such claims to distract from the consequences of the power that they have exercised for decades. "Black Sepratists" are beside the point; the system is not aimed at them, it's aimed at people demanding dominance over our current society. The point is to seperate "control over themselves" from "control over me", to highlight and isolate those for whom the later is in fact the actual point. Further, it highlights the degree to which this has already happened; how Blue enclaves already are not constrained to any great degree by Red preferences or institutional markers.
I am pretty sure that if you established a new political zone with with no practical limits on policy and a significant guaranteed cash flow to anyone willing to form a government, a fair number of people would be lining up to give it a shot. If Oprah wasn't interested, BLM would, and if not them, some black-fronted libertarians. Depending on who was running it and how, I might be willing to move there.
The point of the thought experiment is to try to imagine what it would actually look like to take their concerns seriously and give them as much of what they say they want as possible, while insulating the rest of us from any harmful effects that might result. Given that they are observably pushing schemes such as absolute racial dictatorships, "reparations" to the tune of dozens of trillions of dollars, and the complete overthrow of our justice system, I see no harm in exploring less-insane portions of the possibility space.
So why anybody would? Why they don't just stay right where they are and keep demanding reparations from the US? What is going to stop them?
Nothing, of course. but rhetorically, the point would be proving that they do, in fact, prefer to stay where they are and demand reparations, when this would satisfy their stated goals much better for much cheaper.
If any of the populated area is turned into the racist paradise, the people living there would be forced to either live there or lose their homes, jobs, social environments etc.
Offer them compensation for moving if they wish to move, and likewise for people who wish to move in. Expensive, sure, but a fraction of the cost of some of Kendi's proposals.
What do you mean by "them"?
The blacks who freely choose to move there and establish local government.
The US just declares on 1.1.XXXX the US laws stop working in Atlanta?
Yes. Why should they be forced to live under white supremacist institutions, when it would be so easy to simply not do that? What harm is caused to the rest of us if Atlanta gets to make its own laws as it sees fit?
It seems like you are not grasping the principle here. I have no terminal interest in controlling the lives of my outgroup or my fargroup. If black people or Blue Tribers don't like being ruled by me, it is straightforwardly in my interest to facilitate an amicable separation whereby they do their thing in their area and I do my thing in my area and we simply leave each other alone. I may think their thing is awful, but if they're not willing to work with me and they're not willing to change, it is much better for permit them to do their awful thing somewhere far from me, rather than trying to force them to do things my way. I do not want to be ruled by people who hate me, but neither do I wish to rule people who hate me.
It is useful to frame the conversation this way, because some people really do seem to want to rule their outgroup, apparently as a terminal goal. Others believe that simply leaving each other alone is impossible, which amounts to the same thing. When discussing and organizing politics, it seems quite important to me to have a firm understanding on which people are genuinely just trying to be left alone, and which mean to rule.
You know how well it works on Mexican border, where the counterparty is the actual functioning government that kinda wants to help us with that?
In that case, I submit that since we already have a thousand-mile border with a giant uncontrollable narco-state, adding another, much smaller narco-state won't actually make the problem all that much worse.
If any of the populated area is turned into the racist paradise, the people living there would be forced to either live there or lose their homes, jobs, social environments etc. Why would they agree to that?
For the same reason they agreed to letting BLM and antifa burn their cities, I'd imagine: stupid virtue signaling, purity spirals, and a maniacal commitment to Progressive ideology. The prize would be too big for the Black Community to coordinate refusal, and acceptance would be too-well rewarded for the rest of the Progressive movement to withstand the incentive gradient.
Say, why Oprah would want to live in this racist paradise enclave, if she's already a billionaire in America?
She probably wouldn't. But I bet once it got rolling, she'd be interested in trying to steer it toward good outcomes. Ditto for Obama.
If there would be any desire on the part of the black Americans to live in something like that, black separatism wouldn't be a political nonstarter.
It's a political non-starter because it is so obviously all downside. The point is to formulate the minimum viable upside to make it attractive not to people like you, but specifically to the sort of person who genuinely believes that our society is shot through with racism and white supremacy. Hence the financial incentives created by giving the zone a guaranteed cashflow and guaranteed political autonomy.
Moreover, why limit ourselves to American blacks? There are millions of people who already enjoy this deal - living in a places where US does not control it, and doing whatever they want there, mostly.
Those places don't enjoy the advantages of being a literal part of America, which this state would. They also don't enjoy guaranteed, no-strings-attached cashflow from the US federal government, which this place also would. Their citizens couldn't return to the US at will, which this state's citizens could.
It's easy to propose some sort of mean-spirited deportation scheme under some level of veiling. The point of this is to actually explore the degree to which their preferences could actually be satisfied without unacceptable costs to the rest of us, and to explore what costs are actually "unacceptable".
Why do you think black Americans - who already enjoy full citizenship right, full access to welfare services, significant representation in all power structures and undying admiration of at least one powerful political movement - would want a worse deal than Haitian blacks want?
Americans of any color who chose to move to this state would still enjoy full citizenship rights in the colorblind US, to which they could return at any time, and full access to welfare services (guaranteed when outside the zone under colorblind law, and inside it depending on the laws they collectively write). Black Americans who chose to do so would have significantly greater representation in local power structures, and to the degree that they have no control over national power, they also are granted complete immunity from it within their border. Nor is there any reason to suppose that Blues would stop admiring them. There is no hook or secret gotcha here for the occupants.
and if people understood what it actually means - e.g. losing all access to all the welfare state goodies, US citizen benefits, etc.
My offer is specifically designed to avoid costing them these things, unless they themselves chose to reject them, which I absolutely do not expect them to do.
I see no evidence and no logical reason why they would, and this makes this whole scheme doomed and useless.
If Blue Tribe offered me a deal like this, a city or a small state with existing infrastructure, a significant guaranteed cashflow, and complete freedom from their political and social interference, where the government could only be held by, say, Gun Culture types or Christians, and where we could live under whatever laws we prefer, I would move there in a heartbeat. And again, this is another point of the exercise: to generate a sincere, good-faith offer to your opposites that you yourself would take if the positions were reversed, to explore the degree to which compromise is possible even in principle.
If they think US is built mostly by their ancestors (let's no argue how true it is but assume that's what they think) but they aren't getting their fair share of it, how giving them a soon-to-be-shithole area and absolving ourselves of any responsibility of what happens there would sound like a good deal?
I see no reason why they would believe that it would be a soon-to-be-shithole. I expect it to turn into a shithole because I believe that shitholes are what their ideology reliably produce, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. And I'm not "absolving myself" of responsibility; I'm offering them the chance to take responsibility, because the ability of Blacks and Blues to shirk responsability for their own actions and decisions is a huge part of the problem we're stuck with. I would be happy to take a deal like this offered to my tribe, even if the people offering it did so with the full expectation that my ideology would result in an immediate shithole, because I think they're wrong.
On the other hand, I'd be fascinated to hear why those offered this deal in good faith would reject it, because it would seem to me that rejecting it would be a tacit admission that they know on some level that my tribe is right, that their ideology would in fact create a shithole, and that they are in fact dependent on my tribe to cover for their excesses and abuses.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
and even reports that reached NPR of shootings of unarmed civilians-
I'm pretty sure InRangeTV did a dive on one of those incidents.
True, and that's why the only solution is to abandon the framework where the measure of equality is the equality of statistical outcomes between races (or any other large population-wide categories, for that matter).
Humans form tribal feelings for other people who seem like them. Humans are predisposed to perceive those who share their race as "like them". This can be overridden, but the effect is real and overriding it is not easy, especially when the environment seems threatening. Blacks have an environment that seems threatening, and there is no plausible way to get them to stop forming tribal attachments to others of their race. And this is doubly so when one of the tribes outputs a constant firehose of propaganda about how all their misfortunes are the fault of the other tribe, who hate them explicitly because of their race.
I don't care how many people who have the same eye color as me and the same nose length as me are rich and how many are poor.
I care when people say that whites should be discriminated against or disadvantaged, because I'm white. I care when people hurt or kill white people explicitly for their skin color, because, again, I'm white. I mostly don't care how rich other whites are, because I'm doing pretty okay. If whites were an underclass, and I had reason to believe that the upper classes were keeping us down on purpose, I would definitely care about that.
I care about whether I could be prevented from being richer or made poorer by unjust means.
And they manifestly were being made poorer by unjust means, and they've been told for decades that they still are being made poorer by unjust means. Our whole society is built on propagating that idea. Why would they not believe it?
To be an "underclass" you should first be a "class", and "classes" are entirely arbitrary.
It could be argued that "Jew" is an arbitrary class. But if the Nazis have settled on a definition that includes you, and are actively trying to exterminate you, recognizing the arbitrary nature of "class" doesn't resolve the problem.
In the same way, Blacks are, as the saying goes, "less likely", and not by a small margin. It is not in their individual or collective interest to reject group identity as arbitrary, because then most of them would still be in the same miserable position, only now they'd be alone, with their community ties severed. For most of them, that would very likely put them in a strictly worse position, and this fact is sufficiently obvious that they simply aren't going to do it.
Who are "they"?
The actual, current black community, or whoever they choose or designate from among that community. If it's actually a problem, let Oprah and Obama pick a panel to get the ball rolling. It doesn't really matter who they are, so long as they're unambiguously recognized as black by other blacks. The point is that it not be me or you, because if it's us, we'll be blamed for any bad outcomes that result. Many Blacks see themselves as a separate group, and the point is to give that group absolute power to do things its own way while insulating anyone who doesn't want to participate from the consequences.
What does it mean "control completely" - does it secede from the US?
Effectively, yes. The people inside run it however they want with zero interference from the rest of the country, but with the current level of funding that the occupants would otherwise receive under our current system, and possibly significantly more. They can keep our laws or write their own, interpret our laws however they want or discard them entirely. Let them do things exactly as they think they should be done. If they want to ban private property or institute full communism or legalize murder of white people or make everyone attend their local Baptist church on Sundays, that's fine: everyone there is there because they want to be, and if they don't like it they can leave at any time.
What happens to people that want to keep living in the US and keep being US citizens and keep having US laws? I don't see why for example a black professor at local university would suddenly want to subject himself to a regime that may not be able to sustain any universities at all. Doesn't he have any rights?
...You have fundamentally misunderstood the proposal. No one of any race has to go there, at all, ever. Participation is entirely voluntary. It's a place where the only legitimate legal authority is expressly reserved for its black occupants, carte blanche, but where no one at all is actually required to go, and funded out of the outlays we'd already be providing to the percentage of the population who chooses to live there voluntarily, plus however much extra is required to sufficiently sweeten the pot. The people who believe that US society is founded on white supremacy and structural racism would now have an alternative that has had any plausible influence of white supremacy removed, while sacrificing as few of the advantages of American citizenship as possible. Meanwhile, everyone else can move on with their lives according to colorblind rules. If someone in the rest of the country complains about racism, you now point out to them that if they have a problem, there's an alternative easily available to them, and if they keep complaining, you mock them mercilessly until they shut up.
Areas can't write laws. People write laws. Who will be choosing these people?
It would not be my place to say, nor yours either. The point would not be to create what you or I think of as good governance. The point would be to create, as explicitly as possible, governance by Blacks on their own terms and in their own way, as an explicit alternative to the system governing the rest of the country.
What if there would be 10 groups of people writing ten competing sets of laws - which group is the real one that gets the full control?
That would be for them to sort out. The whole point is that they're in charge of this area, with no plausible legacy of white supremacy and racism to hinder them. Intervening in any way other than the unambiguously positive, ie providing a steady supply of cash, would be completely counterproductive.
Will it blockade the area if there would be threat of violence spreading out?
Their authority is absolute inside the border and null outside it. People who want to leave can at any time, but are subject to standard colorblind US law as soon as they cross the border. That probably should handle any actual problems short of weapons of mass destruction.
What about if they decide to build a giant meth factory and ship it to the US?
We check goods at the border and confiscate contraband. We don't do anything to those inside manufacturing the meth, we just don't let them export it to the rest of the country. Ditto for whatever other hypothetical; treat it like a foreign country, but with more leniency than usual. If they decide to make low-cost drugs and export them to the rest of America... that might not actually be a bad thing.
They already have this status, why we need the racist paradise to achieve what we already have?
The point is that many of them don't believe that colorblind society is actually operating in good faith, so you need to give them a demonstration of good faith, and that demonstration of good faith needs to actually resolve the concerns in a reliable way without opening the rest of us up to exploitation. Reparations are an example of an exploitable demonstration of good faith. This would cost less and be highly resistant to exploitation, and offer a good chance to actually resolve the majority of the distrust.
...The rest of your questions seem to be predicated on people being forced to live in such a zone, rather than being offered a free choice to live there or not as they see fit, so I'll end it here.
In what way are the bussed migrants "unwilling"? I thought it was pretty clear that Texas is bussing volunteers.
What was the "intended support network" in Texas, and why is it better than that of self-declared "sanctuary cities" like New York? My understanding is that absurdly massive numbers of illegal immigrants have been flooding into small Texas towns with poor infrastructure for quite some time now.
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